2024 will be another year of enormous activity for Colombian sports, but the two big objectives are in the United States and France. The goals are to fight for the Copa América title and win an Olympic gold medal again.
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The Colombian senior soccer team has been searching for a new title for some time, after winning the Copa América in 2001, playing at home. Since then, it has not reached the final again: it was third in 2016 and 2021 and fourth in 2004. The tournament, which will be played on North American soil, will begin on June 22 and Colombia will debut on the 24th.
Néstor Lorenzo, the coach of the National Team, has among his goals to win a crown. “It is part of a step by step process that we have been doing, and we always aspire to win. For now we are doing well, we are going to continue with that path and mentality so that the team continues to grow to be able to achieve a goal, which is what we all want, we want to win something,” said Lorenzo before the last friendly of 2023 in Los Angeles, in the one that beat Mexico (3-2), on December 16.
The first semester will be exclusive dedication, with that goal in mind: the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup in North America are on recess until September, and at that time the second third of the qualifiers will begin, with six games until November. But first, the team will have two Fifa dates to prepare for the Cup.
Lorenzo was worried about the end of the game.
In March there will be a match against Spain in London that will measure the team’s growth, on a date to be confirmed, and then they will play against Romania, qualified for Euro 2024. The other window will be in June, with rivals to be defined.
With Luis Díaz as the banner, the return of James Rodríguez and the growth of figures like Jhon Arias, one of the best players on the continent, the National Team is excited. They do not have an easy group: they will have to face Brazil, Paraguay and the winner of the playoff between Costa Rica and Honduras, which will be played in March.
The Olympic Games, a new challenge
The Copa América will end on July 14, and ten days later the most important sporting event of the year in the world will begin, the Paris Olympic Games.
After the historic participation in Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 meant a setback for the delegation. The goal is to surpass the five medals that were achieved in the last edition and win a gold again, which could not be achieved in Japan.
The expectation of the Colombian Olympic Committee is that the delegation will be more than 90 athletes. Several of the medalists from previous editions will no longer be in competition, starting with Catherine Ibargüen, winner of triple jump gold in Rio 2016 and silver in London 2012.
The triple BMX medalist Mariana Pajón will fight for gold again: it would be the third in her career. There is still uncertainty about the sprinter Anthony Zambrano, silver in the 400 meters in Tokyo 2020, who has now not achieved the minimum mark.
Photo:
Olympic Games Portal / iStock
Colombia’s hopes are in disciplines such as track cycling, with Martha Bayona and Kevin Quintero; the march, with Sandra Lorena Arenas; the javelin throw, with world runner-up Flor Denis Ruiz; weightlifting, with Yenni Alvarez, and boxing, with Jenny Arias. Yuberjen Martínez has not yet gotten a place. Some chips are also being bet on the women’s soccer team, after its great World Cup this year.
Back to the Copa Libertadores
Eight Colombian teams will have competition in Conmebol tournaments: Millonarios and Junior are already set in the group stage of the Copa Libertadores, Nacional and Águilas Doradas enter the preliminary stages and América, Alianza Petrolera, Tolima and Medellín will seek, with direct duels between them, two boxes in the South American groups.
The Libertadores is Millos’ great pending historical debt, which has not passed the group stage since 1997 and has not even played it since 2018, when it finished in third place in its area and then fell to the Sudamericana, without success.
Medellín defeats Millonarios 2-0 in a game valid for the fourth date of the final home runs of the BetPlay Colombian soccer league, today, November 30 at the Itagui stadium.
Photo:
Jaiver Nieto Álvarez /ETCE
After a semester in which he tried to continue the roster that the 16th star achieved in June. Millonarios has made some adjustments to the payroll, which for some are insufficient, thinking about international competition. Goalkeeper Diego Novoa, full-backs Delvin Alfonzo and Danovis Banguero and Argentine striker Santiago Giordana, from Deportivo Garcilaso in Peru, are, so far, the new faces of the team led by Alberto Gamero.
It has been different for Junior, who, as he usually does, invested a lot of money to strengthen the team. Colombian soccer’s top scorer in 2023, Marco Pérez, will dress in red and white, and the expected returns of Yimmi Chará and Víctor Cantillo.
Yimmi Chará, in his time in Junior.
Epicenter of women’s football
Colombia will once again host a great women’s soccer tournament. Already in 2022 it received the Copa América, in which the National Team was runner-up, and in the year that ends it organized the women’s Libertadores, in which the local teams were left wanting to win the crown. The one with the best performance, Atlético Nacional, finished third.
Now, the great challenge will be to bring the U-20 Women’s World Cup to fruition, the eleventh edition of which will be played from August 31 to September 22. The venues for the competition have not yet been defined by Fifa and the Colombian Football Federation.
The tournament will also be the opportunity for the Colombian women’s team to achieve another good performance. The base of the team will be the U-17 led by Carlos Paniagua and which achieved the best historical performance in a Fifa tournament in 2022, finishing runner-up in the world after losing the final against Spain.
Linda Caicedo, Colombian figure.
Paniagua will repeat as coach and it is expected that Real Madrid will give way to the current great figure of Colombian soccer for the tournament, Linda Caicedo, a finalist for The Best and already consolidated in the senior team.
Several of the members of that U-17 runner-up in the world already have senior experience, such as goalkeeper Luisa Agudelo and full-back Ana María Guzmán, the latter also a senior World Cup player and also in Europe, with Bayern.
The Pre-Olympic, first challenge
The Colombia Under-23 National Team will seek to return to the Olympic Games. Of the last seven editions of the men’s soccer tournament, it has only qualified for one, in Rio 2016, when it reached the quarterfinals.
The most recent Pre-Olympic, which was played in 2020 in the Coffee Region and in Bucaramanga, was a resounding failure for the team led by Arturo Reyes. It was of no use to play at home and Argentina and Brazil were left with the places for Tokyo.
Daniel Ruiz and Hector Cardenas
Photo:
EL TIEMPO and FCF archive
This time, the qualifying tournament will be played in Venezuela: in Caracas, Valencia and Barquisimeto, from January 20 to February 11, and there will only be two places for Paris 2024. Colombia was in group A, with the local team, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. In B there will be Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay and Peru.
The team led by Héctor Cárdenas has left doubts in its preparation process for the Pre-Olympic. The Federation only appointed a coaching staff in June and the team has not shown good play. Participation in the Pan American Games in Santiago was an absolute failure, with one victory, two defeats in the 90 minutes and another in shots from the penalty spot, fighting for fifth place.
However, Cárdenas trusts in having players who already have international experience, such as Juan David Mosquera, Carlos Gómez, Óscar Cortés and Daniel Ruiz, to get the spot.
Nairo Quintana returns to the World Tour and Movistar
After a year and a half of uncertainty, Nairo Quintana returns to the World Tour. He will do it with a team and a shirt that he knows well, Movistar Team, with which he achieved his greatest achievements. With the Spanish squad, the 33-year-old from Boyacá won the Giro d’Italia in 2014 and the Vuelta a España in 2016 and, in addition, achieved three podiums in the Tour de France: he was second in 2013 and 2015 and third in 2016 .
“I arrive with the hope of contributing my experience to the team and for it to continue being the great team it was before. I have good physical condition, I have trained all year, but without competing, which is the only thing I am missing. I want to feel the pace of the race again, the adrenaline of the competition,” said Nairo on December 21, when he was presented in Madrid.
Nairo Quintana presented at Movistar.
It should be remembered that Quintana left Movistar in 2019 and signed with Arkea-Samsic, from which he left at the end of 2022 after he was disqualified from the Tour de France, in which he had finished in the top 10, when during a control he was detected tramadol.
The Movistar Team’s plans for Nairo are for him to be the team leader in the Giro, a race in which he has not raced since 2017, when he was second, behind Tom Dumoulin, and for him to also participate in the Vuelta a España.
The year of Colombian cycling also includes a new opportunity for Egan Bernal, who will seek to fight for a grand tour again after the serious accident he suffered in January 2022.
Egan’s goal is to win the Vuelta a España, the only major one he is missing: he already won the Tour in 2019 and the Giro in 2021. “When you have already experienced what it means to win a grand tour, and all I need is win a big one like the Vuelta, so I think I can win it if I continue to have the mentality of being one of the best,” said Egan.
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2023-12-31 01:30:00
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